Chapter 27 - Satire and Sentiment

Summary

Satire and Sentiment’ proposes that the commingling of sentimental and satiric modes in Goldsmith’s oeuvre enables him to negotiate the tension between moral ideals and intractable historical structures, using the movement between sentimental and satiric registers to interrogate the difficulty of living in the face of the political, social, and economic changes in Great Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century. Focusing on novels like The Vicar of Wakefield, ‘spy narratives’ like The Citizen of the World, poems like The Traveller and The Deserted Village, and plays like She Stoops to Conquer, the chapter investigates what might be termed the performative dimension of sentimentality and satire in narrative, poetic, and dramatic forms.